London: New View of Brendan Behan

LONDON — Unick O'Con nor's controversial new biog raphy, “Brendan Behan,” up roots more than a few of the sturdy myths, long ago plant ed by Brendan himself, and ever since dutifully watered or rather, whiskyed — by his admirers. He was never quite the brawling, spouting, broth of a slum boy who joked and sang his way into literature and theater when every man's hand was against him. True, he was born in a tenement, but in one of the string of five owned by his grandmother, who allowed the family to live there rent‐free.

Arts Abroad

True, his father, Stephen, was a housepainter, often out of work, but he had been trained for the priesthood. Behan Senior read French and Latin, and after tea in the evening, he would sit the family down to watch him sat out his extracts from Dickens, Zola, Maupassant, Pepys, Marcus Aurelius and Boccaccio. Three of Stephen's sons, Dominic and Brian as well as Brendan, have be come writers. We journalists often used to ask Stephen why he did not produce a book himself. I once heard Min reply, “Produce books? Why should I? I produce Be bans.”

This new study of Brendan suggests that the garglin's habit was learned early. His landlady grandmother fed him whisky from the age of 8, and old friends remember, before he entered his teens, that he would stick his head round the pub door to beg the oldsters — “give us the froth off your pint” — which they generously did and more.

The second weakness in His character, according to this book, was Brendan's bi sexuality. Before it appeared, the humor of this accu sation had leaked out and Brendan's wife, Beatrice, re cently wrote to The Irish Times in Dublin complaining: met the author on sev eral occasions and discussed with him many aspects of Brendan's life. I did not see the manuscript in draft or in its final form and I was un aware of the author's allega tion that Brendan was a homo sexual until I read it with surprise and pain in the book. “Out of respect for Bren dan's memory I must say pUblicly the allegation is un‐true."

“From the time he was a child, I slept with Brendan,” he announced. “I went to Paris with Brendan. And never heard anyone suggest he was homosexual.”

He went on to threaten: “I'll take Mr. Connor and sock him half round Lon don.” But after reading the work, he declared, “I think it's a good book, highly ob jective.” Mr. O'Connor grate fully riposted, “The Behan family are civilized people.”

The Behans were a genteel family who had come down in the world. One of Bren dan's uncles wrote the Irish national anthem and was stage manager of the Abbey Theater. Another, an actor and impresario, leased the Queen's Theater for his com pany most of the year. Bren dan Behan grew up sur rounded by books and free theater seats, poetry and mu sic, politics and philosophy.

He was a precocious, ex ceptionally handsome, child who read at 3; recited Rob ert Emmet's famous long speech from the docks at 6; at 12, he could play Ravel's Bolero on the mouth‐organ and had already published his first newspaper articles. No wonder his family, his friends, the neighbors and, eventually, the world con spired to spoil him rotten.

Mr. O'Connor spotlights two pasted‐over flaws in the posthumous image of Bren dan Behan—one known to anyone who watches TV or reads the newspapers and the other barely put into words by those who have seen him regularly in private and alone. The first was Behan the drinker, as much a boast as a confession, scarcely more than an extra medal on the chest of a much decorated revolutionary, po litical prisoner, gunman and bomb‐runner, who, like most of his family, saw nothing in congruous in being an ardent

Roman Catholic, Communist, republican, and hell‐raiser. As I've heard Brendan say. “I never turned to drink. It turned to me. While I grew up, to eat was an achieve ment; to get drunk a vic tory.”

The evidence for Brendan's homosexuality is thin and doubtful. Between the ages of 16 and 22, apart from six months, he spent his en tire life in prison, cut off from female society. A Dub lin impresario and restaura teur testifies that Brendan made no secret of his interest in clean‐limbed youngsters. An Irish Republican Army leader (executive of a group notorious for its pious, tee total view of life) reports that he saw Brendan kissing a left‐wing poet in an alley way. And Brendan once wrote a first‐person short story about seducing a happily mar ried husband from his wife.

Yet Frank Norman, a tal ented ex‐convict whose plays were staged at Joan Little wood's Theater Workshop in repertory with Behan's, says the biography is “scrupulous ly fair” except that the homosexual traits were “no more than the fantasies of a drunken mind.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, whose interview on TV with Behan first made the Irishman fa mous (“he spoke not one sin gle comprehensible word”), recently summed him up as “not a particularly estimable or likable person. Yet he too hesitates about the homosex uality because this is not “a cut‐and‐dried classification.”

Ulick O'Connor, the 41‐year old author, is himself an extraordinary figure, even for Dublin — barrister, poet, playwright, columnist, TV ce lebrity and athlete—who shares an apartment with his brother and an 80‐year‐old nanny. At 18 he played first class rugby and also won the Irish pole‐vault title. Three years later, he beat all corners to take the British University welterweight box ing championship. Yet he turned up at the London party last month for his bi ography of Brendan Behan nursing a broken jaw, ex plaining: “Somebody takes a swing at me once a month.”

Perhaps this correspondent should declare his own inter est in this controversy, hav ing been twice quoted in the book es a peripheral ac quaintance of Brendan Behan. On one occasion I am de scribed as the “theater critic of The. Daily Telegraph"—one of the few Fleet Street pa pers for which I have never wirtten. Two of the best known London writers on drama of the period, The Evening Standard's Milton Shulman and The Observer's PenelOpe Gilliatt, are as signed to The Daily Mail and The Sunday Telegraph —papers for which they have never written.

How far can one trust the scholarship of a biographer who can make such elemen tary errors?

Either Mr. O'Connor should establish his accusations be yond argument with chapter and verse or he should leave Brendan Behan's already scarred and battered memory alone. As Brendan's widow admitted shortly after her initial letter, such contro versy eventually may only be “giving publicity to a matter which would attract the morbidly curious.”

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A version of this archives appears in print on August 31, 1970, on Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: London: New View of Brendan Behan. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe